


Pick a card!

by Fafsernir



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1, First Kiss, Fluff, Humor, M/M, a touch of emotions and feelings, exasperated Crowley, let's call it angst-if-you-squint, magician aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 17:14:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fafsernir/pseuds/Fafsernir
Summary: 5 times Aziraphale tried a magic trick on Crowley (and failed) and one time Crowley was the one doing the magic trick.





	Pick a card!

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to [starknight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starknight) for beta'ing this fic and for helping me!  
As a magic-enthusiasm myself, I wanted to write about Aziraphale and his love for magic, so there you go, hope you like it :)

**1-**

“Pick a card!”

Aziraphale was very excitedly fanning a deck of cards, although very clumsily. Crowley stared.

“Sorry?”

“I got into magic!” Aziraphale smiled.

Where were those cards coming from? Crowley didn’t know. Was Aziraphale really talking about doing magic? Crowley knew, but refused to know.

“That’s… Isn’t that human magic?”

“Yes!”

“But you can… You can miracle things up, that’s cheating.”

“I don’t cheat. I’m not using miracles for this.” There was a silence. Crowley kept staring at him. What? “Pick a card,” Aziraphale repeated, almost shoving the cards in his face.

“Fine,” he grumbled.

He picked a random card, wondering what Aziraphale had gotten into this time, but he looked absolutely adorable with his soft smile, and his eyes glittered with excitement. Crowley could hardly say no to that.

“Two of hearts,” he still said out loud, just to mess with his friend.

Aziraphale pouted and it was exactly the kind of reaction Crowley had been looking for. “You weren’t supposed to say what it was,” he said.

Crowley grinned, not even pretending that it hadn’t been on purpose. Aziraphale took his card back, shuffled the deck, and fanned it a bit better than before. Crowley took his time to choose one card, only to mess a little bit more with him. He looked at it. Four of spades.

“Right, so… Now I shuffle… Memorize your card, please.” Aziraphale was talking as he did his – bad – routine. He shuffled the cards so painfully slowly. “Oops,” he said when two fell off. Crowley was already rolling his eyes.

Then, Aziraphale snuck out his tongue as he was carefully taking one card, and Crowley almost sighed at the sight. Why did he have to look so darn cute when he did things that were as stupid as human magic?

“Was this your card?”

Crowley blinked, violently reminded that the trick was even more stupid than he’d thought.

“… No,” he deadpanned.

“It’s not? Are you sure? Wait…” And Aziraphale, sweet Aziraphale, started looking through his cards.

Crowley let him search for a couple of seconds, mainly because he wasn’t sure he could keep a straight face when he next talked. Once he recovered from the shock of Aziraphale’s clumsiness, Crowley brought up his hand. He was still holding the card he had picked. Aziraphale looked up, confused.

“Weren’t you supposed to tell me to put it back in the deck?” Crowley asked, trying hard not to smile because that was a new kind of stupidity he was facing.

Aziraphale had the clarity of mind to look embarrassed, at least. “Oh no, I was! I… I thought I did! I know this... Can we try again, please?”

Crowley was ready to gulp down a shot of Holy Water for this to stop. If only for Aziraphale’s sake, who was embarrassing himself by the second.

The door opened and Crowley jumped to his feet, very grateful for the new comers, who had come to save him.

“You can do your wonderful tricks on customers!” he said, leaving the ‘It will scare them off efficiently’ part out.

Aziraphale looked a bit too happy about human magic for Crowley to take it all away from him. Maybe with a bit of training, he would be able to perform a trick. Crowley hoped he would forget about it, though. He was good with miracles, that was sure, but when it came to agility, Crowley had never seen him do well in that field.

**2-**

Aziraphale didn’t forget. He talked about magic a few more times to Crowley, which was fine because he was being passionate about masters of deception, and explaining how he had found out about some tricks, and how clever humans could be, and how fascinating it was that magic was fundamentally based on the art of misdirection and keeping the audience focused on what you wanted them to see while you did your trick. It was interesting, even for Crowley, because he, too, was enthralled by every crazy little thing humans get off to. He was terrified by it sometimes, but not magic. He even enjoyed it, provided it triggered shock and outrage. Houdini’s Water Torture Cell was one of his favourite tricks. The ability some magicians had to make their audience hold their breath and believe something had gone terribly wrong, only to reveal that nothing had, was deliciously satisfying. Especially because nobody got hurt.

Crowley had done some research, following Aziraphale’s passion for magic. He would never admit to having done so, but he was curious to understand why Aziraphale seemed so excited about it. He understood the fascination about magic acts and tricks. He still couldn’t comprehend what Aziraphale, _an angel_, got out of performing frivolous routines and acts, though.

So, when Aziraphale took out his own deck of cards, Crowley rolled his eyes before he could even start.

“No, no,” he whined, shaking his head. “Not again.”

It had been a long time since the disastrous first time. Aziraphale fanned the cards.

“I’m not doing this.”

“Pick a card!” Aziraphale asked, and he looked far too excited.

Crowley would learn how to refuse things when he made this face, one day. This was not the day.

He very reluctantly took a card, making Aziraphale understand that he was not happy to do so. Aziraphale was way too giddy to catch on to Crowley’s hate for his magic tricks.

He still watched carefully as the hands that could perform actual miracles shuffled the cards. None fell this time. He had asked Crowley to remember his card, he had thought of asking for it back. Crowley’s curiosity peaked for a moment. Would he actually get this one right?

“Was that your card?”

Crowley shook his head, pursing his lips. Maybe it was part of the trick. Hopefully, it was part of the trick. Sometimes, it was part of the trick, to pretend the card was the wrong one.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, angel, I’m sure.”

He was just testing his limits. Just playing around. He would reveal it was all an act… Aziraphale was not a great actor, though.

He was an even worse magician, Crowley concluded, hiding a smile behind his hand as Aziraphale turned a few cards over and asked Crowley if it was his card. None were. Aziraphale sighed.

“I must have done something wrong…”

“Obviously,” Crowley thought clever to agree, now fully grinning behind his hand.

“It worked last time,” Aziraphale said, looking at his cards as if they had betrayed him.

“Are you sure they didn’t lie?” The thought of Aziraphale successfully finding a card was absurd and he refused to believe it.

“Of course, they didn’t lie!”

Crowley chuckled at Aziraphale’s offended tone, as if the idea of someone lying to him was too appalling to digest.

When Crowley realised that his test-subjects had been customers, he let Aziraphale have this one. If he wanted to believe into people’s honesty and into his own ability to perform at least the tiniest magic trick, then Crowley wouldn’t crush all his dreams. If it meant he was left alone, it was even better.

**3-**

Aziraphale was organizing some books in the bookshop, in an order that only he understood – and Crowley thought he was starting to get the hang of. It late in the afternoon, they had decided some wine would be nice, and Aziraphale had poured them a delicious 1917 Saint-Emilion. Crowley’s glasses were discarded, somewhere, as they often were when he was a bit drunk with Aziraphale. He didn’t remember when they had gotten into the habit of getting a drink together, but wine was the best invention humans had gotten up to, and Crowley loved their quiet evenings around a glass. Or a bottle. Or more than a bottle. Usually more than a bottle. 

Aziraphale was standing on a stool, his arms stretched out to reach a higher shelf. It was a _literal_ miracle that the stool hadn’t toppled over. Crowley didn’t know or remember why he was organising some books now, but he didn’t mind the view he was getting. Crowley liked looking at his back, where he knew wings resided, unable to spread free whenever they could in this human world. He couldn’t really look at his own back, but seeing someone he knew under another form with a flat back reminded him of how good it felt to be able to stretch out his own wings. He missed it, sometimes. Missed the weight of the wings that his human body wasn’t entirely aware of. Missed grooming his feathers. He still did, sometimes. But he wasn’t using them a lot, and he had taken up on similar earthly pleasures instead. Sleeping felt a bit like grooming his feathers. It was soothing and calming. He liked to lay his head down and doze off, and not care about a thing in the world while he did so.

He wondered if Aziraphale ever spread his wings. He had meant to ask, sometime over the millennia they had known each other in, but he had never. It didn’t seem to be something angels or demons talked a lot about. Crowley figured his inquiries came from the same place his questions had come from, before the Fall. He had always been curious, after all. Other angels and demons probably didn’t even wonder about it.

He missed seeing Aziraphale’s wings, too. Ever since he had seen them, he had wanted to crawl up between them and see how it felt against his scales, and much later, when he had discovered how sensitive the human body could be, how fingers could trigger such delicious reactions, he had wanted to touch them with his hands. He still did. He wanted to groom them for Aziraphale, but that wasn’t something that could possibly be asked or talked about. That was something he kept deep down, hidden inside. The desire was there and sometimes resurfaced strongly and suddenly.

He was staring appreciatively at Aziraphale when suddenly he wasn’t anymore, and Aziraphale’s soft and drunken face replaced his very nice-looking back. It brought Crowley back to reality, and he fought the urge to spread his wings. He couldn’t, not in Aziraphale’s bookshop. He wouldn’t want to knock off some first editions and upset the angel. Especially not now.

“Oh, I wanted to show you something!” Aziraphale exclaimed, collapsing half in his seat, half on the table Crowley was leaning his elbow against.

He raised an inquiring eyebrow, waiting for more. What was it?

Aziraphale put money on the table, and Crowley frowned. They didn’t owe each other money and they never even traded with money, so that was new. Did Aziraphale want a new deal, of some sort? Was it metaphorical? Was he missing something?

“Oh no,” his mouth said before his mind caught up with what was happening.

Aziraphale was putting three cards over three of the four coins he had set at an even distance from each other on the table. A magic trick. He was back at it with his magic tricks. Crowley wanted to discorporate on the spot. Or he wanted Aziraphale to disappear.

He had liked his thoughts about his wings and running his hands through Aziraphale’s better. Even if it meant pining over Aziraphale and how much he was drawn to him.

He tried to become one with the chair, but it wouldn’t let him, and he still had to witness the disastrous sleight of hand.

Aziraphale was _bad_ at magic. There was no denying it.

He still looked very happy, mind you, but happiness and excitement didn’t turn a bad magician into a decent one. Crowley was done finding excuses for Aziraphale to be bad. He might be an angel, but it couldn’t be that complicated to hide and hold a coin between your thumb and palm and drop it just a bit further away, next to another coin.

Aziraphale could not do that.

He lifted a card, announcing two coins would be revealed under, only to find one coin sitting under the card, and he looked around for his lost coin. He had dropped it somewhere in the way and the coin stood proudly in the middle of the table.

Crowley leaned his head against his hand, shaking it disapprovingly. He wished Aziraphale could just turn and do his magic trick facing the other way. He could have been staring at his back, at least. He could have watched the way the very human clothes moved with Aziraphale and how well it married his shoulders. He imagined his bare back, shoulders blades rolling as he moved his arms to try and do a magic trick. He could picture the exact square of skin where his wings would meet flesh. He could almost feel his own hands gently running up Aziraphale’s spine, stopping only a moment between his wings, and his fingers slowly reaching for white feathers, brushing them carefully. Aziraphale would gasp at first, then maybe chuckle lightly, then occasionally sigh and whimper as Crowley would carefully and cautiously run his hands over every single feather.

“Crowley!”

Crowley snapped back to reality, his drunken mind having wandered too far away, and he gulped, trying to ignore how much saliva his body had just produced at the vivid thoughts of such intimacy with Aziraphale.

“My coins,” Aziraphale sighed, as he looked around.

Crowley blinked a few times – which was a lot, especially coming from him and his snake eyes – and realised he had teleported the coins behind Aziraphale only when he saw him get up and stumble to bend over in order to pick them up.

Crowley choked and coughed to cover it.

Aziraphale was bad at magic tricks. He was good at other things, like getting Crowley flustered. But he most definitely was not a magician.

**4-**

Crowley startled with a grumble when he felt a hand on his arm. He would not admit that the hand felt warm and good on his arm (but it very much did), and that he almost followed it when it left. He had dozed off in Aziraphale’s bookshop at some point, watching customers go in and out, scaring a few off or playing with them occasionally.

When Aziraphale had asked if he had nothing else to do, he had answered he had some small temptations to do on his customers. Aziraphale had stopped complaining about it, because it drove them off very efficiently and that was all he needed, really.

Crowley mumbled a bit while he blinked his sleep away. He enjoyed napping and sleeping, and his human body had grown used to it, to a point where he almost needed to sleep. He sometimes felt tired and getting some sleep helped – especially when said sleep extended to days, or months, or years, or even decades. That decades-long-nap had been the best sleep he had ever gotten.

When he focused on Aziraphale, who seemed to be waiting for him to emerge, his eyes instantly fell on his hands, and the look of horror on his face was only matched by his jump back, off the chair and to the ground. A bit of an overreaction, one would think, but there was no overreaction for this.

Aziraphale, sweet, pure, innocent Aziraphale, was none of that. He was evil incarnate, especially when he was holding this in his hand.

“I’m not doing that, angel,” Crowley sleepily said from behind the chair.

“Crowley, please.”

“Ngk.” He was begging, the vile creature.

Crowley looked above the chair from his hiding spot, and Aziraphale was smiling, his white hair glowing as his hands were praying in front of his chest. He was actually begging.

Crowley climbed back on the chair from behind and flopped into it, searching for his glasses, which he couldn’t find.

“If I help you look for them, would you do this for me?”

Crowley narrowed his eyes. Something sounded off. He still nodded, intrigued. The glasses appeared in Aziraphale’s hands and Crowley rolled his eyes. He had taken them only to blackmail Crowley, then. And Crowley was supposed to be the demon… Sometimes, he wondered if it wasn’t the other way around, because Crowley sure was tempted by Aziraphale a lot. But that was another discussion.

“Okay, so, this time, it’s only with twenty-one cards,” Aziraphale started, and Crowley whimpered.

“Noooo—” he sighed, rolling his head back.

“You promised.” Aziraphale said, not stopping as he counted to twenty-one.

It had been a long time since Crowley had seen Aziraphale with cards in his hands, and he had been living very happily without that image in his mind. Waking up to it had been truly horrific. It was the worst sight anyone could have opened their eyes to. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the worst, because the angel holding the cards was a sumptuous sight – but again, that was an entirely different discussion.

Crowley looked without looking. He did smile when Aziraphale separated his twenty-one cards in three and ended up with a supplementary one in his hand. If he couldn’t even count to twenty-one properly, this could at least be fun. Although, Crowley wouldn’t mind Aziraphale successfully doing a trick, for once. That would be a real surprise.

He did not succeed in his trick. Crowley didn’t really pay attention to it, but the card Aziraphale was holding had never been the one he had picked, and the fact that he managed to fail a trick that only required him to know where to put the one pack with Crowley’s card in the middle three times in a row amazed Crowley.

He dozed off again, hidden behind his glasses, as Aziraphale tried to understand what had gone wrong, and Crowley didn’t offer any help at all.

**5-**

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“I’m begging you.”

“You’re _begging_?” Crowley almost choked on the word.

“I need you to help me for that one.”

“Nope.”

“Please.”

“Ngk.”

_Smooch_.

Crowley’s eyes opened widely, along with his mouth. Had Aziraphale just…? Had he? What?

Certainly not blushing, Crowley gulped. That was cheating. Straight up cheating. Aziraphale was an evil, _evil_ pawn of Satan, and Crowley knew a thing or two about that. He was manipulating him into consenting to be an audience for yet another magic trick, and Crowley hated that he loved it.

He couldn’t say he hated that Aziraphale had just kissed his cheek, though. Even he had his limit when it came to denial. This was just impossible to ignore or pretend didn’t exist.

At least it was only with eight cards, Crowley managed to think after connecting back his mind to his body. And if it failed, he avoided Aziraphale the embarrassment of failing a magic trick at Warlock’s birthday party. Crowley still couldn’t believe he was going through with his idea of entertaining the party as a magician. It was very low, for an angel, especially considering Aziraphale’s lack of talent for magic tricks. But he refused to listen to him or come face to face with the fact that while he could do nice miracles, he just couldn’t manage sleight of hand.

He watched Aziraphale’s hands move around and followed the cards, nodding or shaking his head to answer Aziraphale’s different questions about his card – which basically came down to asking “Is your card here?” while he showed four of the eight cards.

Then Aziraphale carefully divided the cards, face down, into two packs.

“The cards will guess what card you had in mind,” he announced. Then, pointing the deck on the right, “this one will tell if you picked a Queen or a King.” He turned it. Queen of Spades. “Was it a Queen?”

Crowley frowned. Yes, it was.

His hands moved again, turned another card. “This one tells us if it was a red or a black card.” King of Hearts. “Was it a red card?” _Yes_!

He divided the last two cards and pointed to one. “This one will reveal whether it was Diamonds or Hearts.” He turned it over. King of Diamonds.

Nope. Crowley sighed, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands.

Aziraphale pouted as he turned the last card to reveal the Queen of Diamonds, but Crowley shook his head.

“How can you mess an eight-card trick, angel?” he whispered, fascinated by Aziraphale’s incompetence at human magic.

“It was my first time,” Aziraphale enthusiastically responded. “Card tricks are not my strong suit, anyway.”

“Clearly,” Crowley sarcastically agreed, resisting the urge to tell him that magic tricks altogether weren’t his strong suit.

“What was your card anyway?”

“Queen of Hearts.”

“Interesting,” Aziraphale smiled.

He hadn’t really thought when Aziraphale had asked him to choose a card among all the Queens and Kings, his mind still processing the gentle kiss to his cheek. The burning feeling of Aziraphale’s lips on his cheek resurfaced and Crowley decided to pretend the card didn’t mean anything.

“Wanna try again?” he said very reluctantly, knowing it would stop any conversation about how soft he was – because he _wasn’t_.

And to prove it, he chose the King of Spades. Nothing gentle about that one. Aziraphale did not guess it right.

**+1**

Crowley grinned as he stared at Aziraphale finishing his dessert. They had chosen to eat at home, which allowed Crowley to look a bit more at Aziraphale as he slowly consumed his probably favourite human pleasure. Not that he usually wouldn’t, he never stopped himself much, but it felt different.

He put down his empty glass, sprawling even more in his chair, which shouldn’t have been possible. He almost pressed Aziraphale to hurry up and finish his lunch but he behaved and waited patiently.

It was hard. His leg betrayed his anticipation, and Aziraphale asked him what was wrong. He froze, pretended nothing was on his mind, but tapped his fingers on the table and against his glasses.

Finally, _finally_, Aziraphale dabbed his mouth with his napkin, and Crowley sighed.

“I’ve got a magic trick for you, angel,” he said without breathing – not that he needed to – and incredibly fast, as if the words had been waiting to get out for hours, which they had.

Aziraphale’s face was worth the painful wait. Surprise mixed with excitement and maybe a bit of confusion. Crowley loved how Aziraphale let his expressions be so readable on his face. Or maybe he just knew him too well.

“But you _hate_ magic tricks,” he babbled, unable to answer anything else.

“I appreciate successful tricks,” Crowley corrected, straightening a bit against the back of his chair.

He waved the dishes away and took three cards out from his jacket, putting them face up on the table. The two black Queens, and the Queen of Hearts. He had become quite fond of that card, despite himself. A near Armageddon made you think of stupid stuff such as ‘which card is my favourite?’ He had thought back of the failed magic trick Aziraphale had performed to him before Warlock’s birthday, and a small part of him had regretted that moment. The thought of not exasperatedly rolling his eyes at the angel’s incompetence had been oddly terrifying, but he would _never_ tell him. Aziraphale wouldn’t survive it and Crowley would never hear the end of it. He still had thought that maybe Aziraphale wanted to see magic tricks. At least one that wouldn’t end with anything except the right outcome.

“The only thing you need to do is follow the red card, angel,” he explained, turning the three face-down.

He had put much more effort into this than he would care to admit. It wasn’t hard in itself, but it was hard to resist the urge to snap the cards in the way he wanted them to go. Still, it was the honestly easiest trick he had heard of.

He picked up the cards and moved them around, not too quickly.

“This one,” Aziraphale pointed at a card. He almost shrieked when he found the red Queen, clapping his hands like an excited child.

Crowley had to remind himself that he was the one doing a magic trick and shook his head to try and focus, ignoring Aziraphale’s adorable reactions as best as he could.

By the second time, Aziraphale was confident enough for Crowley to understand that he would trick him even more easily than he had thought.

He picked up the cards a third time and did the exact same moves. Almost. He was holding two of the cards, and instead of letting go of the bottom card as he had done previously, he dropped the top card first. His smile widened when Aziraphale, full of his new-found confidence, pointed at the wrong card.

Crowley turned it over very slowly.

Aziraphale gasped. “How did you—Crowley! Did you cheat?”

“I don’t cheat,” Crowley winked, clicking his tongue at the same time.

“Do it again,” Aziraphale said, his brow furrowing.

Crowley chuckled, showed where the red Queen proudly stood, and moved the card around, repeating the same movement.

“This time, I’m sure this is the right one,” Aziraphale said, pointing at a card.

“Are you _really_ sure?”

“I… Stop playing with me!” Aziraphale whined.

Crowley laughed when he turned the card to reveal a black Queen.

“Again!”

Okay, that was a bit too much, even for Crowley. But Aziraphale had his pride, especially when it came down to magic, so Crowley indulged… mostly.

He had only promised himself he wouldn’t cheat for this trick. He had never said he couldn’t add a bit of a show.

Aziraphale chose the wrong card again, and Crowley turned the other two to reveal that the red Queen had turned into a blank card.

“Where did it go?” Aziraphale asked with an impressed respect written on his face, still believing that it was part of the human trick.

“Check your shirt pocket,” Crowley shrugged, taking back the cards from the table and putting them back in his jacket.

“I don’t have a pocket.”

“You do now.”

“That’s cheating,” Aziraphale reproached.

He still carefully unbuttoned his waistcoat – an unnecessary move to access his shirt, really, but Crowley sure didn’t complain – and reached for the left side of his shirt. He found a pocket and drew a card out from it. He put it on the table and smiled, looking down at the Queen of Hearts, now engraved with ‘AJ Crowley’, in Crowley’s handwriting.

“Did you use a miracle every time?”

“Just for that last one, angel.”

“I see.” Aziraphale carefully picked up the card and put it back in his shirt pocket, patting it with a satisfied smile. “Thank you.”

“Don’t,” Crowley mumbled. He almost repeated it when Aziraphale brought his hand to his waistcoat, probably to button it back up. He didn’t, and took it off instead, putting it on the back of his chair.

Then he looked at Crowley, who straightened up unconsciously as he felt his eyes staring deep into him.

“Why did you learn this trick?”

_To make you happy_, Crowley thought. Instead, he shrugged, “To show you what a real magic trick looked like.” It sounded a bit crueller than anticipated, but Aziraphale was familiar with his disdain for his magic tricks, after all.

“Well, thank you, dear,” Aziraphale smiled, knowing very well that it was a lie.

“I warned you against this,” Crowley grumbled. He didn’t like thank yous, he never had.

“Yes, right.”

Aziraphale’s hand raised to his new shirt pocket and Crowley stared at his fingers drawing the lines of the card through the fabric. His stomach flipped oddly at the sight and he shifted in his seat.

“Could you show me?” Aziraphale asked, his hand over his heart.

“Sure,” Crowley croaked.

He wasn’t expecting Aziraphale to be able to do this trick, but the idea of standing close to him as he helped with the easiest sleight of hand, the idea of their hands brushing against the other’s as they would work together… It was all very appealing.

“Oh, th—”

Aziraphale swallowed back his ‘thank you’, watching out for any negative reaction in Crowley’s eyes. Upon seeing none, he tentatively leaned closer to him – they had been standing close already as they liked to sit side-by-side rather than face-to-face. Crowley was about to ask what his intentions were, just so he could brace himself for it, when he felt Aziraphale’s lips on his cheek.

It wasn’t the first time Aziraphale kissed his cheek. Crowley remembered being tempted into doing something with such kisses before. They never spoke of it, of course they didn’t, but Aziraphale would sometimes lean in and peck his cheek, and it felt oddly good. He had never done it as a thank you before, probably because Crowley never refrained from spilling his hatred for gratitude.

Maybe he just didn’t like the words ‘thank you’. Maybe that was simple as that. It represented something that Crowley didn’t like. He did things either because he wanted to, or because he had to. For him, neither called for a thanks. If he was forced to do it, then receiving a ‘thank you’ was borderline insulting. If he did something because he wanted to, it just didn’t make sense for the other person to thank him. Especially when it was Aziraphale.

A kiss on the cheek, Crowley realised, was different. For one, it was more personal, which matched his actions more – he didn’t do things for _people_, he did them for _Aziraphale._ It felt good, too. The feel of warm lips delicately being pressed against his cheek, leaving an invisible burn on its way. The unsettling but familiar warmth spreading through his very-human body. 

He had caught up on it quite early – all those small reactions he couldn’t quite control. He knew it was linked to Aziraphale, because it happened when he was around, or when Crowley thought about him. It had been the first sign he hadn’t been able to ignore. Betrayed by the body he had been given, Crowley had discovered the meaning of human love. 

Why was that kiss any different from the ones Aziraphale had not any less delicately placed on his cheeks?

To start with, it felt awfully close to the snake on his cheek. That was new. Nobody touched that. Some had tried. Crowley had not liked it and pushed them away with a hiss. He hadn’t wanted anyone to touch it.

What was new, too, was the fact that Armageddon had… not happened.

It had been a lot to take in in only a few hours. Using Holy Water and the fear of dying at any wrong movement, the bookshop on fire, the way he had felt powerless and broken and like he was falling again when he hadn’t been able to find – hadn’t been able to _sense_ – Aziraphale, his good old Bentley going up in flames just as he had been reunited with a very much alive Aziraphale, the Four Horsemen. Adam. Beelzebub, Gabriel. Satan. The certainty that they would not survive it, after all. Surviving it. Heaven. Going back to Heaven, more than 6000 years after having been cast down from it. It had been a lot. It had been so, so hard, keeping up his best Aziraphale impression while his soul was crying at the loss. It wasn’t that he missed Heaven in itself, but the Fall still hurt to think about. He’d hoped things would change, after his Fall, he had hoped the ‘good’ seed left behind would have made Heaven a good place, would have made Heaven what is was supposed to be. It hadn’t.

“Crowley,” came Aziraphale’s soft voice, and Crowley inhaled deeply, even though he didn’t need to.

Aziraphale’s fingers were under his chin, forcing him to look at him, and Crowley gave a small ‘I’m fine but not really’ smile that never fooled Aziraphale.

Sometimes, Crowley’s mind spiralled back around these painful and tiring few hours, and it reminded him of how close he had been to losing everything, how close _they _had been to losing everything.

It explained the fact he had learned a magic trick just to please Aziraphale, it explained why he spent all his time with Aziraphale, it explained why he couldn’t leave his side. He didn’t know what would happen if he did, and he didn’t want to know. He didn’t need to know, because Aziraphale was accepting him. He had adapted himself to being around him. Maybe he had felt the same urge, too. Crowley didn’t know, didn’t ask. Aziraphale hadn’t been in the fire, he hadn’t lost Crowley. And Crowley never wanted him to know how it felt.

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, because Crowley was still not back with him.

He startled when he felt a finger drawing the lines of the snake of his cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned against the touch. Aziraphale was alive, Earth was still standing, Heaven and Hell hadn’t quashed them.

“It’s okay,” Crowley heard.

He opened his eyes, looking for Aziraphale’s with the desperation of someone who was feeling lost and suddenly needed something, someone, to help them up, to prevent them from drowning. Aziraphale’s eyes were there, looking with patience and affection at Crowley.

Crowley held on to Aziraphale’s wrists as if his life depended on it, as if letting go would mean falling. He didn’t want to fall. Not again.

“You’ll share when you’re ready,” Aziraphale whispered, his thumb still drawing the lines of the snake, his eyes still looking at Crowley, his mouth still stretched into a smile.

Crowley barely nodded, but it was still something, and Aziraphale let go of a sigh. He cupped Crowley’s face with his right hand and brought his head a bit down, only to kiss his forehead, his lips lingering on the skin.

Crowley closed his eyes, breathing in easily. It helped going through the panic, sometimes.

He was still holding Aziraphale’s wrists as he looked back up at him, their faces only inches apart. Crowley felt Aziraphale’s eyes going down to his lips as his own did. Aziraphale often did so. Crowley had noticed it a long time ago, but he had said nothing. Aziraphale probably didn’t even notice, probably didn’t even know what effect he had on Crowley when he did this.

Except he did.

They both leaned in and yet, they both startled when their lips met. Crowley’s hands slipped from Aziraphale’s wrists to his face, framing it as his lips discovered Aziraphale’s. It was gentle, soft, almost withholding, but it felt so good and so right.

They pulled back at once, glancing sideways as both tried to recover from it.

Under the table, their hands locked together.

“Right. Erm… You’re not getting out of teaching me your trick,” Aziraphale said, wiggling on his seat.

Crowley laughed, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t dream of it, angel,” he said, tightening his hold on Aziraphale’s hand. He would have to let go of it, eventually. Not now, though.

Human magic wasn’t so bad, Crowley decided. He would roll his eyes to the stars if Aziraphale decided to do another magic trick, mind you, but it was part of them. It had been part of them since Aziraphale had gotten those cursed cards out for the first time, since he’d immediately failed.

Except he hadn’t really failed, because how could failing ever lead to this?


End file.
